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Packaging Plays Unsung but Pivotal Role in Vaccine Development

March 2020: Just as PACK EXPO East was starting, I got a phone call from my wife: “I’m sick. Come home.”

Ben Miyares

Four hours later I was on a flight home to Bay Village, Ohio. Doctors’ initial thoughts about her condition were vague, cautious, and to me, not very reassuring: “Some kind of upper respiratory infection…pneumonia, flu, or something…” I remember one doctor describing my wife’s URI as “severe.”

We were just becoming aware of a disease called COVID-19, a type of coronavirus for which there was not yet a cure. Seven men and women between the ages of 30 and 80-something were already infected in Ohio with this new respiratory virus. By February, the outbreak was branded a pandemic. Cause: unknown. Disinfectant sprays, wipes, paper towels, and toilet paper disappeared from store shelves. Shelf tags told us where the products had been. Virus cases in the U.S. were developing in specific hot spots around the country. Nursing home residents, cruise and airline passengers, people who’d clustered together for shows, concerts, and church services—and the elderly—were said to be at highest risk. Was that what my wife had? Probably not. Best guess? A bad cold/sinus infection with a touch of pneumonia.

As weeks stretched out to a year, COVID-19 infections and deaths rose. Medications developed for other diseases were tried as treatments for COVID-19. Most didn’t work. More than 22 million Americans and 90 million people around the world tested positive for the virus in the first year. The number of infections continued to climb. The consumer media reported that the coronavirus pandemic was overwhelming the pharmaceutical industry. The media hailed doctors, nurses, firemen, teachers, and first responders as heroes in what appeared to be a futile struggle to fight the virus.

But the efforts were not all futile. Vaccinologists raced to create effective treatments. And around the world, packaging engineers worked to develop innovative solutions for the safe and effective distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines, not all of which had yet been cleared for use on patients. Two packaging projects of note:

A transdermal patch. Researchers at Swansea University in Wales are designing a microneedle “smart patch” to let patients self-administer vaccine less invasively than with traditional hypodermic needles. The adhesive patch incorporates a phalanx of microneedles to dispense the medication. The patch is also designed to measure the patient’s inflammatory response to the vaccination by monitoring biomarkers incorporated in it.

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